Been seeing a few here in the north, not many though compared to past years. Lots of bumblers and carpenter bees. Tons of wasps of all kinds too!

Quite a lot of the honeybees have been wiped out by a variety of mites and other disease states. This has been in the news for several years now.

Here is a link that might be useful: Honey Bee Demise

I have noticed as well the *total* lack of honeybees, and actually not very many bumblers around here and even the wasps are less than usual (yay!), yet I am still getting seeds from several plants and I know I'm not responsible for 99.9% of it (chocolate JMG may be the exception).

Arum's post got me to googling and I was very concerned, especially recalling that a great honey farm some 15 miles north of here closed down a few years ago; I remember talk a year before they closed about their bees getting a type of bee diarrhea and dying in the hive (they had a great glass observation hive in the middle of their little store, and it was *such* a great thing to bring the kids in to show-and-tell). It was sad that their family business had to close but their reasoning in fact was competition from bigger companies and overseas, and they couldn't make it.

At any rate, I'm not hoarding food yet... the link below is another perspective on the bigger picture of the history of honeybees in this country...

Here is a link that might be useful: Bee not afraid... Slate article